A Hestian Reprieve
by lotuskasumi
Summary: From a prompt on Tumblr requesting something fluffy and domestic, with the Doctor being stuck at Clara's for a time while the TARDIS is on the fritz. (Whouffle/Twelve x Clara)


_Start of Week One: Matching Mugs_

The doorbell rang, followed soon after by a knock, terribly insistent and demanding - and far past the hour Clara could expect anyone worth seeing.

A quick peek through the peephole, after arching up on her toes to put one bleary eye to the glass, was all it took to drive hopes of sleep from Clara's thoughts. She undid the latches and locks quickly, and opened the door wide enough so the Doctor could see her in all her Spongebob pyjama glory, as well as the obvious disapproving stance.

"It's three in the morning," she said.

"It is," he said at once, simply, directly, completely unconcerned with this fact.

"It's three in the morning and you're _here_."

"Those two aren't exactly related."

"Then why _are_ you here?" she asked, yawning into her free hand and leaning against the door for support.

The Doctor put his hands into his pockets, pulled a face she didn't quite recognize, and glanced at the space behind Clara, further into her apartment. An obvious suggestion, with the eyebrows raised and everything, but there was no word to accompany what he intended.

Clara thought she knew anyway. She sighed, thought about slamming the door shut simply because she knew if she had company then that meant sleep would not be in her stars, not for tonight, and pushed the door open wider so he could pass through.

"I'll put the kettle on."

It took him only a few minutes to explain himself – and even that wasn't much of an explanation as much as it was a strangled sort of confession.

"Something's wrong with the TARDIS," he said.

Clara waited, but that was all he said for a good three minutes.

She sipped her tea and stared at him across her kitchen table, wondering where the rest of his sentence had gone to. He was eying something over her shoulder - no doubt her impressive bookshelf - with restrained delight, as if itching to take it apart and critique her choice of organization.

"Well, what's wrong with it?" she asked at last.

"If I knew what was wrong with it I'd have fixed it and already told you about it."

"So then... Why _are_ you telling me about it?"

There was that look again - the sort of evasive, momentarily terrifed look she had come to associate with him in these rare, genuine moments when he forget that he could actually be seen. It was gone, and gone rather quickly, but Clara had expected that, too. "Because until I know what's wrong with it I can't fix it, and that might take some time."

"So? Take all the time you need."

"And I need to keep it somewhere safe until that happens." He was looking at her dead on, straight forward, but there was something Clara was clearly missing.

Clara put her mug on the table with a little decisive slam. "So do a search for the safest place in the universe and keep it there. Doctor, why are you telling me any of this?"

"Because if I could do that I would have done it!" he fired right back, not missing a beat of the argument that came without any sort of proper anger, but a shallow kind of fire that Clara refused to take as anything else. They were certainly not bantering - no, not them. "And because you got fussy in the past when I did this without asking your permission."

Clara lowered her hand from massaging the throbbing pain right over her eyes to the table, and did so slowly, his words impacting.

"No."

The Doctor nodded.

"You didn't, not again."

"I did - well, technically no, I didn't, seeing as it's in a different place this time. And I did you the courtesy of leaving your flat, locking it back up with the sonic, then knocking to come in. Not that I get any thanks for that."

Clara, horrified at the thought of having to try to manoeuver in an already small apartment _without_ the impediment of a TARDIS, pushed herself to her feet and dashed to check all the likely places he could have landed that damned, temperamental thing. Not in the bathroom, for which she let out a relieved, tight sigh. Not in her bedroom, though she hadn't really expected it to be there - but you couldn't be sure, not with this one. The hallway closet where she kept her extra coats and holiday decorations was the last likely place, and as there was nothing out of the ordinary in there, Clara returned to the Doctor clearly puzzled and far more awake then she had been when she departed.

It was then that she noticed it - right behind where she'd been sitting, standing there as bold as brass. Was it her imagination or did the little light on the top flicker once, as if to mock her?

Clara looked at the Doctor, not saying a word. She didn't have to.

After finishing his tea and muttering something about "forests for the trees," the Doctor folded his hands politely on his lap, leaned back in his chair, and looked Clara dead in the eye. "Can I keep it there? It's the perfect spot, you can't miss it. Well - not any more."

"What if I have company over?"

"You have company. Me."

"Don't start with that again," she said, raising a finger as if to pierce the air and his almost suspiciously jubilant expression with pinpoint precision. He looked so much like how her students would get when they stumped her with a question she wasn't quite sure where to start answering. It didn't often happen, but when it did Clara was sure it would be the sort of humiliation that would shorten her life by a good decade or two. _So did that Hamlet fella _really _fancy Ophelia or was he playing the whole time? _That one had struck her silent for too long, and their laughter had petered out to an awkward, nervous shuffle. She could have sworn a few of them looked positively panicked when she drew herself back into proper teacher mode and said, _I don't know_. Because no one did.

"Why here?" she asked at last, though they both knew each other well enough by this point to know the real question. It was written across her face, staring out from her eyes. _Why me?_

The Doctor looked at his hands, and then at the pair of mugs on the table. She'd used the matching set and didn't realize - ridiculous little polka dotted things, the color palette swap for each other. "Because there's nowhere else that's safer," he said, breaking through the silence.

Clara bit her lip, watching him smile at her - it was the same smile he'd shown when they were first alone together on the TARDIS, unguarded, a little afraid, and suddenly much too sad. "For how long?"

"A month, tops."

A _month. _She was just glad it was the summer – but then, there went any hope she had for actually making a holiday out of it. "A month. Got it. Promise?"

"I wouldn't dare to. I might break it."

Clara almost took a step back at this. "You sound awfully sure of that."

He shrugged, opening and closing his hands with a little clap. "Well it might only take a week, and then where would I be? With three more whole weeks to owe you, and I don't like the idea of debts."

"Says the man who never has money," Clara grumbled.

* * *

><p><em>End of Week One: Celebratory Souffles.<em>

It did not, in fact, take a week.

"What's the point of a time machine if it _can't fly_?"

Clara shushed him, a natural reflex at this point. The neighbors had started to complain about her noisy new Scottish acquisition, and all Clara could do was smile and drum up whatever excuse came into her head for the sudden intrusion to their apartment complex's disrupted Eden. That most of the complaints were coming from the man upstairs, who let his sons stomp around and hop off the furniture directly over Clara's bed, felt just a touch out of line to her – but she hadn't quite found a way to bring this up without bringing in a swear or two along with it.

But that was a polite habit she was dangerously close to breaking, a fact she reflected over with a quiet laugh once she heard the Doctor muttering a storm of words that tread dangerously close to expletives. At least the translation circuit wasn't broken.

Clara strolled out from the kitchen, eying his disastrous efforts with curiosity. "Not so loud, you'll wake the neighbors," she said as he threw another book onto a pile of wires and cogs and tubes. What the book could have possibly done to help that situation, Clara simply did not know.

The Doctor pulled at his hair, leaving it amusingly rumpled and in obvious disarray. Clara almost smiled at it as she took a quick glance up from her recipe book, right before giving the bowl in her hands a necessary counterclock-wise stir. "Good, get them up, maybe they can come over and put those leaden beasties to use."

Clara frowned. "Leaden beasties?"

He was only half listening, still pacing, still pulling at his hair in a way that was almost – dare she think it? - adorable. "You were always going on about how he lets those kids run rampant indoors," he said, rapid-firing off the accent at this point. "Had no idea why it drove you out of your mind until I lived it."

"Experience makes masters of us all," Clara muttered, stirring the bowl again.

The Doctor noticed her properly at last, and he eyed her from the top of her ponytail down past her rather battered apron, to her mismatch sock-clad feet with a sort of bemused panic. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Baking," she said at once. "Don't look so surprised; you bought the milk for me."

"I didn't know what it was for, it didn't come with a label on," he said. "But why now?"

"It's Friday," she said, a touch defensively. "And I always bake on Friday."

"For who?"

"For myself." She paused. "And for you now that you're stuck here."

That seemed to intrigue him more than the whole idea of her baking. "Let's have a look." And he strode over closer, peering into the depths. "What do you hope it'll be?"

"A celebratory souffle."

"Celebrating what?"

Clara shrugged and turned her back to him, strolling back into the kitchen. She could feel his eyes on her and was sure he knew, somehow, that she was smiling. "You survived a whole week in one spot. That deserves some kind of reward, and as I'm fresh out of gold medals..."

"That's something to celebrate, is it? The Doctor. Grounded. _Rooted. _To be treated to a hopeful souffle?"

"That's if it even ends up as a souffle," she said, putting the bowl onto the counter and brushing her suddenly clammy, shaking hands off on her apron. The Doctor was standing in the doorway to the kitchen with a gaze that was far more clever than she would've liked. "You know me and my track record. Barely oh-for-two at this point."

"Third time's a charm," he said, and though his back was already turned by the time Clara looked up, surprise written across her face, she was sure that he was the one who had been smiling.

* * *

><p><em>Start of Week Two: Two Truths and a Lie<em>

The man upstairs had taken his "leaden besties" out to the country for the week, and the Doctor celebrated the news by slamming the door to the TARDIS as often as he could whenever he dashed in and out of it, grabbing at a steadily growing pile of junk ("_Supplies!_") that was blocking Clara's access to her bookshelf. His change in temper could not have come at a worse time for Clara, who had been expecting this little moon-abiding interruption to her happiness and overall state of thoughtful clarity, and had been curled up on the couch for most of the day, clutching a pillow to the agony in her stomach.

"Do you _have _to slam the door?"

"I don't do it because I have to, I do it because I want to."

"Then stop wanting to."

The Doctor frowned at her as he strode into the TARDIS – then frowned as he backed out of it. "Are you all right?"

_No. _"I bet that's why she's not working,"Clara pointed out, her eyes ticking back and forth like a spectator at a tennis match watches the game's progress. The Doctor could be rather spry when he wanted to – but he looked awfully funny while he ran. Something like a cross between a penguin and a gazelle. She hid her smile in her hair, which was hard to do – he kept looking over at her, noticing her limp, pale stale and clearly wondering at it.

"Why who's not working?" he asked, pausing in his dashes to tear through the pages of a little brown book Clara last recognized from her shelf.

"That's one of mine," she said, and he snapped it shut and dropped it onto his "supply" pile. "I meant the TARDIS. I bet she's not working because you're too rough."

"Am not."

"Are so."

It was the closest they'd come to an argument all week since he first arrived, but there wasn't even a shallow fire to her words. Clara didn't have the energy to keep up her end of the fight.

"What's the matter with you?"

"It's a thing."

"What thing?"

"A sort of monthly... thing."

He paused, considering this. "Take your mind off it, then," he said, muttering something more under his breath as he disappeared back into the TARDIS.

Clara counted three minutes until he came back out. "You could help," she suggested.

"Could I?" he asked, crouching next to the "supply" pile and digging through its impressively varied depths. Clara thought she could see a scarf, an umbrella, and an impressively garish multi-colored coat all wound up in the mess. Once again she couldn't understand why any of these random items would be in any way important to whatever was stopping the TARDIS dead.

There was something about them that pricked at her memory, images half remembered, like a dream that fades the instant you open your eyes and greet the day. Clara closed her eyes and hugged the pillow closer, curling up around the little ball of warmth she was generating for herself. "We could play a game," she said.

"Aren't we always?"

"What?"

"Why would we do that?"

Clara propped herself up on her elbow and squinted at him. "I heard that."

"Good, so your hearing hasn't gone. Why would we?" he repeated.

Clara shrugged. "To pass the time. To take my mind off it. Because I want to."

"Those are three different answers," he pointed out, picking up a pair of glasses and squinting at them. He put them into the pocket of his suit coat and patted the flap shut.

"So pick one and get started."

The Doctor, still crouched among the ruins of what Clara was starting to assume were batches of memories and treasured things in days of yore, clenched his teeth and glanced at her with the sort of look that pierces. She returned it with a smile. "I have the entire discography to Hibari Misora memorized."

Clara blinked. "What?"

"I have never seen a more wretched attempt at a souffle than the one you displayed on Friday," he added, frowning as he began to sift through the supplies pile again. Clara's heart almost stopped when she saw the familiar, wrinkled knot of a scarlet bow tie. "And I don't know how sharks make babies."

It took Clara a long while to figure out what he was getting at – she'd seen some variation of these games played before, had played them herself as an undergraduate with friends and hopeful dates. _Two truths and a lie. _"The last one," she said, watching the way the Doctor began to wind the thread of the bow tie around his hand as if bandaging a wound – but he quickly cast it off again, and shook his head. "The last one's the lie."

"How do you figure?"

"Because the last time we discussed the mating habits of sharks, I said carefully and you said happily," Clara reminded him – then she drew up straighter, slamming the pillow down onto her lap. "Hang on. Who's worse at souffles than I am?"

"Why, d'you want to compete with them? Bad habit to have, Clara. Best break it."

"Hark who's talking," she said, laughing once, and not kindly.

The Doctor stared at her – and then glanced away quickly when Clara mimed a bow and arrow, and did her best, roguish, Robin-inspired wink.

"Right. Never do that again," he grumbled, pushing himself to his feet and disappearing inside the TARDIS.

Clara considering sacrificing her pillow for the sheer pleasure of chucking it at his head when he reappeared, but another bolt of made her reconsider. She groaned and laid down flat again on her side, a miserable lump with all joy flattened.

"It's your turn," the Doctor's voice said, reflectively, quietly, from a position just next to her head.

Clara pushed back her hair and looked for him – she didn't have to look long. He was crouched down next to her, a sad, brief smile moving over his face as he handed her what looked like hot water bottle in a little polka-dotted cosy. "Might be more useful than that pillow," he offered.

_Did he do it on purpose?_, Clara wondered, as his fingers ran over hers carefully as she took hold of what he offered. He had to – there had to be a reason for it, and him being deliberately aware of game-playing and rule changing was far more likely a thing for him to do than him being intentionally oblivious. _Playing _at obliviousness, yes, that Clara could agree with – which was very much what she'd told the student who'd quizzed her about Hamlet's intentions, now that she thought of it.

Strange, the places her mind could carry her when the Doctor was around. It was as if she had no hold on any thought at all, but could only stand back and wonder at their mad, reckless paths, branching from one idea to the next the way the stars suddenly pop into life in the sky.

"I harbor a secret, guilty admiration for boy bands," Clara said, impressed at how she could keep a straight face while uttering such a blatant lie right off the bat. "Marcus Aurelius was the only pin-up I have ever owned in my life, and Darjeeling is the closest thing I have to a cure-all."

"The second one, clearly," he said, without pausing to consider it.

Clara kept her face carefully composed. "Are you sure?"

"Without a doubt." Misreading her expression, the Doctor almost gave her an assuring pat on the shoulder, until he realized just how close he still was. He all but jumped away from her, returning to his little pile of memories. "Don't be too hard on yourself, Clara. But you did make that far too easy for me. You could at least try harder next time. Word from the wise to the one who's wising up."

Clara held the hot water bottle to her stomach and swapped it out for the pillow – which she let sail deliberately over the Doctor's head, skimming the top. "Remember what you said in the larder? About being wrong in public?"

"I wouldn't consider this _public_," the Doctor challenged, then considered what she said – and what he hadn't argued against. "Right. Again?"

"Best not make a habit of it, Doctor." Clara smiled, the picture of politeness, with just a small hint of mockery to help dig the point home.

The Doctor turned away with a scowl.

* * *

><p><em>End of Week Two: Door and Key<em>

"Marcus _Aurelius_?"

Clara tried hard not to yelp and clutched tigher at her robe. That she was dressed beneath it was besides the point – he couldn't know that. He didn't seem to care much for situation either way, and was all flailing arms and flustered, sharp shouting when Clara slammed the bathroom door back in his face.

"_You could knock!_"

"You didn't answer the question."

Clara slammed her knuckles on the opposite side of the door, right around the spot she was sure he was listening. "_Knock-knock, _Doctor."

"Clara, I'm being serious – " he paused, sighed, and she could _see _him rolling his eyes. "Another one? I thought we were through with this days ago. Honestly now." The Doctor imitated her knock, three rapid-fire taps, and said, "Who's there?"

"Doctor."

"... Oh, don't. Don't make me say it, it's not even clever."

"_Doctor_." A warning.

He sighed again, and grumbled louder. "Doctor _who_?" he spat out, as if she had asked him to pluck out a rib and offer it to her gratis.

Clara opened the door and gave his chest a sharp, single-finger poke. "Doctor I-have-no-idea-how-knocking-works-and-that's-bound-to-land-me-in-trouble-some-day."

He held a hand to the part of his chest that was now thoroughly battered under her touch. "That's not even close," he argued. "And that'd look awful on a business card."

Clara breezed past him into her room, pulling the towel off her hair and rubbing it furiously against her scalp, trying not to look at his reflection in the mirror. She took a seat in front of her vanity and sighed, catching sight of his expression, despite her earlier conviction. "What's this about Marcus Aurelius?"

"Just questioning your choice in pin-ups. He'd be positively mortified if he knew about it."

"Then go tell him," Clara said, attacking her still wet hair with her fingers, combing out the tangles.

"Tell him yourself," the Doctor said, and it was then that Clara noticed he was holding something in his hand. Small enough to disappear into his palm, but precious enough to be held with obvious care, the Doctor bent his hand and watched the little key catch the light from Clara's standing lamp. He tossed the key once into the air and caught it, just as Clara turned in her chair to stare at him, eyes wide and gleaming, mouth stretched into a smile.

"You didn't."

"I did," he said, and he held the TARDIS key up for her to see and appreciate. "Fixed it while you were busy in the shower. What took you so long?"

"I always take long showers."

"I noticed. Don't take as long getting ready, yeah? You've got an emperor waiting on you – though, on second thought, scratch that. He's plenty distracted by your mobile."

Clara nodded vaguely, brushing her hair with a gentler touch as she watched the Doctor back out of the room.

And then his words sank in:

"You brought him _here_?!"

* * *

><p><em>Later.<em>

Clara paused in the doorway to the TARDIS, ready to step off and back into her flat, but more than just her stubbornly planted feet kept her rooted to the spot. She was turned to face the Doctor, who was scrawling furiously across the array of chalkboards he kept on the second level near his bookshelves, taking in the sight of him. Her heart let out a little ache that she couldn't quite hide from her face, but she managed to make it into something else when he turned to look at her.

"Still around?" he asked, not exactly surprised or dismissing the idea, merely commenting on the fact.

"It's a good thing you didn't promise to stay out the month," Clara said, swinging the TARDIS door idly back and forth, not quite ready to close it behind her yet. She looked up at him, waiting to see if he caught the hint. He seemed to: his face had gone serious, still, like a man waiting for the final blow. "Two weeks isn't so bad, is it? In your case I'd almost call it impressive."

The Doctor flattened his hands against the railing that circled the little platform on which he stood. "We had our fun, Clara," he said, and it was the closest thing to an insult she'd heard from him in the two weeks they'd shared a single roof.

"So off you go again. Leaving." She didn't understand why her throat should choose now of all times to grow tighter and pricklier, as if there were glass inside instead of air.

"I'm not the one at the door," he pointed out gently, nodding to it.

"But you're not staying," Clara replied, and she knew by his silence and the way it continued on that he could not argue this – he knew better now, this new him.

"I could," he said suddenly, making her draw up short as she pushed the door open again. "I mean, I might. I could do it, if I wanted."

"Why would you want to?"

"If I gave my word."

"But you might break it."

"I might not. Not unless I want to."

"Who would want to?"

"Who indeed?"

It took Clara all of ten seconds to understand the expression on his face, and by then she had shut the door and charged over to him, determined to hug him no matter how bitterly he complained about it. _Not me, _the look said. _Not me, not this time._

* * *

><p><em>Later, still.<em>

"So. What was wrong with her?"

"Hmm?"

"The TARDIS. What was wrong with her?"

"It's all a very complicated matter, Clara. Wouldn't want to bore you."

"That sounds like an evasion," she asked, spinning the chair around a second time and watching his stern face pass in a blur. "Go on, break it down for me."

The Doctor sighed without a sound. He closed the book he was pretending to read with a little snap and ran his fingers along the golden edges of the pages. Idle gestures, impatient, time-wasting motions – she noticed how easily he lapsed into these traits during their two weeks together. "A Hestian reprieve," he said, making the nonsense phrase sound all the more impressive with his rolled Rs and intentionally laid-on accent.

Clara planted her foot on the floor to stop the spinning. "Sorry, what?"

"In a word, domesticity." The Doctor cast his eyes around the console room as if he were doling out silent accusations. "She was getting restless and needed a place to settle down."

"Now, when you say _she_," Clara began, drawing one foot up to prop it on the chair and wrap her arms around her knee. "You're obviously doing a bit of projecting there, aren't you?"

"Clara, _please_." He sighed again, loudly this time, with a little shake of the head and another frustrated tug at his hair that Clara somehow, she wasn't sure when, had learned to love.


End file.
